Creamy Spinach-Heavy Green Ramen

It hit me somewhere between the second and third guilty glance that this massive bag of wilting spinach in my fridge was about to become my next culinary disaster.

My sister had left it after one of her health kicks, and it was starting to look pretty sad sitting there next to my leftover pizza and questionable takeout containers.

I figured I had two choices: throw it out and feel guilty about wasting food, or find some way to use it that wouldn't make me want to order a burger halfway through eating it.

The whole idea of blending spinach into a sauce seemed like something only people who shop exclusively at Whole Foods would think was a good idea.

Wet spinach makes watery sauce, and watery sauce makes sad ramen.

But then I started blending it with the cream cheese and Parmesan, and something weird happened.

The color turned this incredible bright green that looked like someone had captured spring in a blender, and the smell was actually pretty amazing.

Not that fake, trying-too-hard healthy smell, but rich and creamy with this fresh, almost grassy undertone that made me think of those fancy restaurants where they charge you twenty bucks for a salad.

The lemon juice brightened everything up, and suddenly I was looking at this sauce that actually looked like something I might want to eat instead of something I was forcing myself to consume for nutritional reasons.

Cream cheese gets weird and lumpy when you rush it, and nobody wants chunky green sauce.

When I poured it over the noodles, I have to admit I was still skeptical.

Green food just doesn't look right sometimes, you know?

It's like your brain is programmed to be suspicious of anything that bright.

But that first bite completely changed my mind.

The spinach didn't taste like health food punishment at all.

It was creamy and rich and had this depth that I wasn't expecting, like the Parmesan and cream cheese had somehow convinced the spinach to stop being so aggressively virtuous and just be delicious instead.

The lemon zest added these little bursts of brightness that cut through all that creaminess without making it taste like salad dressing.

Raw pine nuts are expensive disappointment, but toasted ones are liquid gold.

The pine nuts on top were the real game changer though.

They added this toasty, nutty crunch that made the whole thing feel like an actual meal instead of some kind of elaborate vegetable smoothie.

I found myself going back for seconds, then thirds, and by the end of the bowl I was genuinely confused about how something so green could be so satisfying.

My sister would have been proud, but I wasn't about to tell her that her health food experiment had actually worked.

Some victories are better kept to yourself, especially when they involve admitting that vegetables can actually taste good when you stop treating them like medicine.